TopicalityInterpretation – the affirmative must defend desirability of topical action. “Resolved” means enactment of a law.Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). “Resolved”. 1964.

Definition of the word “resolve,” given by Webster is “to express an opinion or determination by resolution or vote; as ‘it was resolved

by the legislature;” It is of similar force to the word “enact,” which is defined by Bouvier as meaning “to establish by law”.

Oxford Dictionary defines ban:http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/ban

Officially or legally prohibit:

Violation: conceded in cross-ex that he defends the resolution as a symbol of rejecting the idea of the handgun.

Reasons to prefer:1. Institutional engagement:The state is inevitable—learning to speak the language of power creates the only possibility of social change debate can offer. This is best served by imagining the consequences of policy.Coverstone 05 Alan Coverstone (masters in communication from Wake Forest, longtime debate coach) “Acting on Activism: Realizing the Vision of Debate with Pro-social Impact” Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference November 17th 2005 JW 11/18/15

An important concern emerges when Mitchell describes reflexive fiat as a contest strategy capable of “eschewing the power to directly control external actors” (1998b, p. 20). Describing debates about what our government should do as attempts to control outside actors is debilitating and

disempowering. Control of the US government is exactly what an active, participatory citizenry is supposed to be all about. After all, if democracy means anything, it means that citizens not only have the right, they also bear the obligation to discuss and debate what the government should be doing . Absent that discussion and

debate, much of the motivation for personal political activism is also lost. Those who have co-opted Mitchell’s argument for individual advocacy often quickly respond that nothing we do in a debate round can actually change government policy, and unfortunately, an entire generation of debaters has now swallowed this assertion as an article of faith. The best most will muster is, “Of course not, but you don’t either!” The assertion that nothing we do in debate has any impact on government policy is one that carries the potential to undermine Mitchell’s entire project. If there is nothing we can do in a debate round to change government policy, then we are left with precious little in the way of pro-social options for addressing problems we face. At best, we can pursue some Pilot-like hand washing that can purify us as individuals through quixotic activism but offer little to society as a whole. It is very important to note that Mitchell (1998b) tries carefully to limit and bound his notion of reflexive fiat by maintaining that because it “views fiat as a concrete course of action, it is bounded by the limits of pragmatism” (p. 20). Pursued properly, the debates that Mitchell would like to see are those in which the relative efficacy of concrete political strategies for pro-social change is debated. In a few noteworthy examples, this approach has been employed successfully, and I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed judging and coaching those debates. The students in my program have learned to stretch their understanding of their role in the political process because of the experience. Therefore, those who say I am opposed to Mitchell’s goals here should take care at such a blanket assertion.

However, contest debate teaches students to combine personal experience with the language of political power. Powerful personal narratives unconnected to political power are regularly co-opted by those who do learn the language

of power . One need look no further than the annual state of the Union Address where personal story after personal story is used to support

the political agenda of those in power. The so-called role-playing that public policy contest debates encourage

promotes active learning of the vocabulary and levers of power in America . Imagining the ability to use our own arguments to influence government action is one of the great virtues of academic debate. Gerald Graff (2003) analyzed the decline of argumentation in academic discourse and found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place. I’m up against…their aversion to the role of public spokesperson that formal writing presupposes. It’s as if such students can’t imagine any rewards for being a public actor or even imagining themselves in such a role. This lack of interest in the public sphere may in turn reflect a loss of confidence in the possibility that the arguments we make in public will have an effect on the world. Today’s

students’ lack of faith in the power of persuasion reflects the waning of the ideal of civic participation that led educators for centuries to place rhetorical and argumentative training at the center of the school and college

curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57) The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the great virtues of the traditional notion of fiat that critics deride as mere simulation. Simulation of success in the public realm is far more empowering to students than completely abandoning all notions of personal power in the face of governmental hegemony by teaching students that “nothing they can do in a contest debate can ever make any difference in public policy.” Contest debating is well suited to rewarding public activism if it stops accepting as an article of faith that personal agency is somehow undermined by the so-called role playing in debate. Debate is role-playing whether we imagine government action or imagine individual action.

Imagining myself starting a socialist revolution in America is no less of a fantasy than imagining myself

making a difference on Capitol Hill . Furthermore, both fantasies influenced my personal and political development virtually ensuring a life of active, pro-social, political participation. Neither fantasy reduced the likelihood that I would spend my life trying to make the

difference I imagined. One fantasy actually does make a greater difference: the one that speaks the language of political power . The other fantasy disables action by making one a laughingstock to those who wield the language of power. Fantasy motivates and role-playing trains through visualization. Until we can imagine it, we cannot really do it. Role-playing

without question teaches students to be comfortable with the language of power, and that language paves the way for genuine

and effective political activism. Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change must

confront governmental power at some point. There is a fallacy in arguing that movements represent a better political strategy than

voting and person-to-person advocacy. Sure, a full-scale movement would be better than the limited voice I have as a participating citizen going from door to door in a campaign, but so would full-scale government action. Unfortunately, the gap between my individual decision to pursue movement politics and the emergence of a full-scale movement is at least as great as the gap between my vote and democratic change. They both represent utopian fiat. Invocation of Mitchell to support utopian movement fiat is simply not supported by his work, and too often, such invocation discourages the concrete actions he argues for in favor of the personal rejectionism that under girds the political cynicism that is a fundamental cause of voter and participatory abstention in America today.

2. GroundNot all topics offer equal ground. Absent a topical fairness requirement, the aff will be biased by competitive incentive to find the most obscure and uncontroversial advocacy while still using a few of the words in the topic – you force me to make offensive arguments against the AC like ableism good. The only neutral topic debate is one chosen by a 3rd party topic committee.In-round competitive equity is a voting issue:A) It’s the only way to resolve rounds—the ballot asks you who did the better debating but if one side was unequal then you cannot sign your ballot since you have no way of determining who was the better debater and not the better cheater.B) Violations of competitive equity prevent effective dialogue and participation.Galloway 7 Ryan Galloway 7, Samford Comm prof, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28, 2007

Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table , where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of each topic as its central point of departure.

Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team.

According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in

the dialogue . When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant

(Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice . Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to

exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to “understand what ‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114).

3. LimitsAffs outside the topic justify debates about literally anything the aff feels like discussing, making the neg prep burden near impossible. You can combine any method with an imaginary gun ban- exploding the # of affs. You can combine a gun ban with afropessimism, afro-optimism, afro-futurism, trans and queer rage, black theology, and OOO.Only limited topics protect participants from research overload which materially affects our lives outside of round.Harris 13 Scott Harris (Director of Debate at U Kansas, 2006 National Debate Coach of the Year, Vice President of the American Forensic Association, 2nd speaker at the NDT in 1981). “This ballot.” 5 April 2013. CEDA Forums. http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4762.0;attach=1655

I understand that there has been some criticism of Northwestern’s strategy in this debate round. This criticism is premised on the idea that they ran framework instead of engaging Emporia’s argument about home and the Wiz. I think this criticism is unfair. Northwestern’s framework argument did engage Emporia’s argument. Emporia said that you should vote for the team that performatively and methodologically made debate a home. Northwestern’s argument directly clashed with that contention. My problem in this debate was with aspects of the execution of the argument rather than with the strategy itself. It has always made me angry in debates when people have treated topicality as if it were a less important argument than other arguments in debate. Topicality is a real argument. It is a researched strategy. It is an argument that challenges many affirmatives. The fact that other arguments could be run in a debate or are run in a debate does not make topicality somehow a less important argument. In reality, for many of you that go on to law school you will spend much of your life running topicality arguments because you will find that words in the law matter. The rest of us will experience the ways that word choices matter in contracts, in leases, in writing laws and in many aspects of our lives. Kansas ran an affirmative a few years ago about how the location of a comma in a law led a couple of districts to misinterpret the law into allowing individuals to be incarcerated in jail for two days without having any formal charges filed against them. For those individuals the location of the comma in the law had major consequences. Debates about words are not insignificant. Debates about what

kinds of arguments we should or should not be making in debates are not insignificant either. The limits debate is an argument that has real pragmatic consequences . I found myself earlier this year judging Harvard’s eco-pedagogy aff and thought to myself—I could stay up tonight and put a strategy together on eco-pedagogy, but then I thought to myself—why should I have to? Yes, I could put together a

strategy against any random argument somebody makes employing an energy metaphor but the reality is there are only so many

nights to stay up all night researching . I would like to actually spend time play ing catch with my children

occasionally or maybe even read a book or go to a movie or spend some time with my wife. A world where there are an infinite number of affirmatives is a world where the demand to have a specific strategy and not run

framework is a world that says this community doesn’t care whether its participants have a life or do

well in school or spend time with their families. I know there is a new call abounding for interpreting this NDT as a mandate for broader

more diverse topics. The reality is that will create more work to prepare for the teams that choose to debate the topic but will have little to no effect on the teams that refuse to debate the topic. Broader topics that do not require positive government action or are bidirectional will not make

teams that won’t debate the topic choose to debate the topic. I think that is a con job. I am not opposed to broader topics necessarily. I tend to like the way high school topics are written more than the way college topics are written. I just think people who take the meaning of the outcome of

this NDT as proof that we need to make it so people get to talk about anything they want to talk about without having to debate against

Topicality or framework arguments are interested in constructing a world that might make debate an unending nightmare and not a very good home in which to live. Limits, to me, are a real impact because I feel their impact in my everyday existence.

Limits controls the internal link to all your offense-even if the aff is a good model for debate, I can’t predict it which means no engagement on critical issues. It’s better to have a flawed model than no model at all. That also means cross/applications from the aff are IMPOSSIBLE- I indict my ability to engage. ALSO, even if you prove that you don’t have to be T, you should at least disclose the aff before the round- that solves your offense but gives a net benefit of engagement.4. Dogmatism – things in the world are not so one-sided – each side has a reasonable argument. Even if the resolution is incorrect, having a devil’s advocate for deliberation is crucial to avoid dogmatism – even if the other side is wrong, learning why they are wrong to convince them is important to improve advocacy. It teaches us to have the willingness to be dislodged instead of polemic discussions which is what politics faces today – climate deniers, the tea party, the NRA, etc are not willing to hear the other side and be open to the possibility of being wrong.

5. Topical version of the affA. if your argument is that guns are capitalist, you can just say we should pass a handgun ban

B. Baudrillard affs on this topic say we should engage with the hyper reality by passing a handgun ban to simulate its failure on gun culture., demonstrating a sacrifice of societ.

Vote negative:A) Key to endorsing good methodologies—1AR severance prevents effective dialogue on the role of the ballot and having a methods debate sets a norm for other roundsB) It’s too late to have a constructive debate about public policy since there are only three speeches left—also causes aff skew since they have more speeches and a 7-6 advantage over me.

NCNon-natural moral facts are epistemologically inaccessible.Papineau 07 – (David [David Papineau is an academic philosopher. He works as Professor of Philosophy of Science at King's College London, having previously taught for several years at Cambridge University and been a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge], “Naturalism”. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/ 2007)

Moore took this argument to show that moral facts comprise a distinct species of non-natural fact. However, any such non-naturalist view of morality faces immediate difficulties, deriving ultimately from the kind of causal closure thesis discussed above. If all physical effects are due to a limited range of natural causes , and if moral facts lie outside this range, then it follow that moral facts can never make any difference to what happens in the physical world (Harman, 1986). At first sight this may seem tolerable (perhaps moral facts indeed don't have any physical effects). But it has very awkward epistemological consequences . For beings like us, knowledge of the spatiotemporal world is mediated by physical processes involving our sense organs and cognitive systems. If moral facts cannot influence the physical world, then [we can’t] it is hard to see how we can have any knowledge of them .

It is a natural fact that pain is badNagel 86

Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere, HUP, 1986: 156-168.

I shall defend the unsurprising claim that sensory pleasure is good and pain bad, no matter whose they are. The point of the exercise is to see how the

pressures of objectification operate in a simple case. Physical pleasure and pain do not usually depend on activities or desires which themselves raise questions of justification and value.

They are just sensory experiences in relation to which we are fairly passive, but toward which we feel involuntary desire or aversion . Almost [ E]veryone takes the avoidance of his own pain and the promotion of his own pleasure as subjective reasons for action in a fairly simple way; they are not back[ed] up by any further reasons .

The standard’s utilitarianism.The plan results mass incarceration making the war on drugs pale in comparison.Kopel 92 David B. (Director of the Firearms Research Project at the Independence Institute, a Denver, Colorado think-tank. He also serves as an Associate Policy Analyst with the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and as a techincal consultant to the International Wound Ballistics Association. J.D. 1985, University of Michigan Law School; B.A. Brown University, 1982. Kopel's book, THE SAMURAI, THE MOUNTIE AND THE COWBOY: SHOULD AMERICA ADOPT THE GUN CONTROLS OF OTHER DEMOCRACIES? was awarded the Comparative Criminology Prize by the American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology) “Banning Handguns?” Washington Post http://www.davekopel.org/2A/OpEds/OpEdBanGun.htm JW

But while homicides of all types would increase, America would find itself increasingly short of the prison space in which to confine the additional murderers. The drug war (which Senator Chafee enthusiastically supports) is overwhelming the nation's prisons, making it increasingly difficult to confine violent criminals for lengthy terms. In many large cities, the criminal justice system is collapsing under the immense volume of drug prosecutions. The Chafee war on handguns would make the war on drugs look small time. In California, only 20% of gun-owners obeyed a requirement that they register their semi-automatics. In New Jersey, fewer than 2% of owners of "assault weapons" have complied with the legal mandate to surrender their guns. While there are only a few million "assault weapon" owners, about a quarter of all households in the United States contain a handgun . Under the most optimistic compliance scenarios , 15-20% of American households would ignore the handgun ban . Possessing newly-illegal handguns, tens of millions of Americans would now be defined as felons,

eligible for Senator Chafee's five-year federal prison term[s] . The number of new "gun criminals" would be at least as large as the current number of "drug criminals.z

Incarceration is vicious form of structural violence.McLeod 15 Allegra (Associate Professor of Law at Georgetown) “Prison Abolition and Grounded Justice” UCLA Law Review 1156 (2015) http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2502&context=facpub JW

Prisons are places of intense brutality , violence, and dehumanization .70 In his seminal study of the New Jersey State Prison, The Society of Captives, sociologist Gresham M. Sykes carefully exposed how the fundamental structure of the modern U.S. prison degrades the inmate’s basic humanity and sense of selfworth. 71 Caged or confined and stripped of his freedom, the prisoner is forced to submit to an existence without the ability to exercise the basic capacities that define personhood in a liberal society.72 The inmate’s movement is tightly controlled, sometimes by chains and shackles, and always by orders backed with the threat of force;73 his body is subject to invasive cavity searches on command;74 he is denied nearly all personal possessions; his routines of eating, sleeping, and bodily maintenance are minutely managed ; he may communicate and interact with others only on limited terms strictly dictated by his jailers; and he is reduced to an identifying number, deprived of all that constitutes his individuality.75 Sykes’s account of “the pains of imprisonment”76 attends not only to the dehumanizing effects of this basic structure of imprisonment—which remains relatively unchanged from the New Jersey penitentiary of 1958 to the U.S. jails and prisons that abound today77—but also to its violent effects on the personhood of the prisoner: [H]owever painful these frustrations or deprivations may be in the immediate terms of thwarted goals, discomfort, boredom, and loneliness, they carry a more profound hurt as a set of threats or attacks which are directed against the very foundations of the prisoner’s being. The individual’s picture of himself as a person of value . . . begins to waver and grow dim.78 In addition to routines of minute bodily control, thousands of persons are increasingly subject to long-term and near-complete isolation in prison. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated that 80,000 persons are caged in solitary confinement in the United States, many enduring isolation for years.79

Case

Material conditions 1 st Oppression is created by social systems so only a focus on material conditions can solve.Johnson no date Allan Johnson (PhD in sociology, he joined the sociology department at Wesleyan University) http://www.cabrillo.edu/~lroberts/AlanJohnsonWhatCanWeDO001.pdf JW accessed 2-13-16 pp. 698

Privilege is a feature of social systems, not individuals. People have or don't have privilege depending on the system they're in and the social categories other people put them in. To say, then, that I have race privilege says less about me personally than it does about the society we all live in and how it is organized to assign privilege on the basis of a socially defined set of racial categories that change historically and often overlap. The challenge facing me as an individual has more to do with how I participate in society as a recipient of race privilege and how those choices oppose or support the system itself. In dealing with the problem of privilege, we have to get used to being surrounded by paradox. Very often those who have privilege don't know it, for example, which is a key aspect of privilege. Also paradoxical is the fact that privilege doesn't necessarily lead to a "good life," which can prompt people in privileged groups to deny resentfully that they even have it. But privilege doesn't equate with being happy. It involves having what others don't have and the struggle to hang on to it at their expense, neither of which is a recipe for joy, personal fulfillment, or spiritual contentment.... To be an effective part of the solution, we have to realize that

privilege and oppression are not a thing of the past. It's [is] happening right now . It isn't just a collection of wounds inflicted long

ago that now need to be healed. The wounding goes on as I write these words and as you read them, and unless people work to change the system that promotes it, personal healing by itself cannot be the answer. Healing

wounds is no more a solution to the oppression that causes the wounding than military hospitals are a solution to war . Healing is a necessary process, but it isn't enough.... Since privilege is rooted primarily in systems—

such as families, schools, and workplaces—change isn't simply a matter of changing people. People, of course, will

have to change in order for systems to change, but the most important point is that changing people isn't enough. The solution also has to include entire systems , such as capitalism, whose paths of least resistance shape how we feel, think, and behave as individuals, how we see ourselves and one another.

Cap InevitableCapitalism is science. Economic theory means it’s bound to stay-empirics prove.

Scheper 5 Patrick Q. Scheper “Capitalism: An Inevitable Conclusion” Rebirth of Reason February 8th 2005 http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Scheper/Capitalism_An_Inevitable_Conclusion.shtml JW 3/15

The next question that needs to be asked is "What is capitalism? Is it an art or a science?" The question is better asked, "Is

economics an art or a science", as cap italism is an economic theory . However, as we will see, it is really the only correct economic theory that can prevail. Economics is the study of how people relate to each other when it comes to trade and production. As this is the case, economics is really part of political science , or the study of how people relate to each other in an organized society. Poli tical sci ence is a science (as the name implies) and

is part of the broader science, philosophy. Philosophy is a science in that it is grounded in certain absolutes (which, ironically, some of the most well-regarded philosophers have ignored.) This essay is not intended to defend these absolutes, as there are plenty of other works which adequately do so. This essay accepts the fact that there are absolutes. Existence, the primacy of existence, the primacy of the

individual over society, and identity are the most notable. From these absolutes, natural laws can be found and universally validated . The most important of these, for the purposes of this essay, are the "natural rights": life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. From

these come other laws and rights, like the right to free speech and property rights. If philosophy is a science based in absolutes, than its resulting branches must also be sciences and grounded by the absolutes and laws derived from them. Therefore, economics is a science and all economic systems must be consistent with natural laws. The only truly consistent economic system is a capitalist one as it is in its most basic of definitions a system whereby everyone is allowed to act according to natural law and pursue his own interests so long as his actions do not prohibit another’s ability to do so. Economics is a science, and capitalism is a valid and universally true scientific

process. In fact it is the only true scientific process that can be used in the field of economics.Correct Science Always Prevails Because capitalism is scientifically correct, it will always prevail . Any attempts to build an economic system or process

that ignores the basic law s derived from the absolutes of philosophy and ignores natural rights and laws, will inevitably come to destroy itself , just as the [person] man who jumped off the cliff and ignored gravity met [their] his demise. Economics is a process, in that it studies the means by which people interact and exchange and create resources. Capitalism is a specific process that defines how an economy should work via individual freedoms. Capitalism, as it adheres to the basic absolutes of philosophy, is scientifically correct. Other economic systems have been proposed and put into place throughout history, either voluntarily or through coercion. These systems have failed, are failing, or will fail if they are inconsistent with reality and its absolutes.

Socialism and communism ignore the primacy of the individual and as a result disregard property rights and a person’s right to his life and its products. As we have seen in the Soviet Union and other

communist countries, these economic systems will destroy themselves . A society where the factors and outputs of productive efforts are completely or partially controlled by the states cannot exist in perpetuity, as natural laws will eventually come to topple the system.

The basic human nature to protect one’s property from being forcibly taken against one’s will and an individual’s primacy over society will always (though sometimes very gradually) overcome even the most ruthless coercive efforts. Just as natural rights prevailed over communism and are beginning to open up former

communist economies to free market processes, so too will natural law prevail[s] over "active governments" and economic regulations set up in quasi-free market countries like the United States. Government regulations, agencies, and laws that inhibit the free market will never work in the long run. Examples can be seen in the fact that private industries always correct government errors (i.e. FedEx, private schooling) and even those seemingly uncorrectable errors will simply be outdone by more efficient market forces. 401(k) plans are eliminating dependency on social security for many and private charities always seem to pop up to correct poor planning and misuse of funds by the welfare state. FedEx was set up and marketed on its ability to outdo the inefficient United States Postal Service. The internet, information technology, and Silicon Valley have rendered many government regulations useless if not downright impossible to enforce. When a proponent of the free market gets discouraged by government regulations and coercive authority, he need only to look around to see that capitalism always prevails, even in the face of extreme regulations and anti-competitive laws. Communism, socialism, regulations, and all other free market hindrances are akin to the man who jumps off the cliff. Capitalism is the gravity that will cause his fall.

PolicymakingThe aff is stuck in the academia and re-entrenches problematic institutions by satisfying people with criticisms. Only realistic reform can solve – constant critique only hinders effective solutionsBryant 12 (levi, prof of philosophy at Collins college, Critique of the Academic Left, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/)

The problem as I see it is that this is the worst sort of abstraction (in the Marxist sense) and wishful thinking. Within a Marxo-

Hegelian context, a thought is abstract when it ignores all of the mediations in which a thing is embedded. For example, I understand a robust tree abstractly when I attribute its robustness, say, to its genetics alone, ignoring the complex relations to its soil, the air, sunshine, rainfall, etc., that also allowed it to grow robustly in this way. This is the sort of critique we’re always leveling against the neoliberals. They are abstract thinkers. In their doxa that individuals are entirely responsible for themselves and that they completely make themselves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, neoliberals ignore all the mediations belonging to the social and material context in which human beings develop that play a role in determining the vectors of their life. They ignore, for example, that George W. Bush grew up in a family that was highly connected to the world of business and government and that this gave him opportunities that someone living in a remote region of Alaska in a very different material infrastructure and set of family relations does not have. To think concretely is to engage in a cartography of these mediations, a mapping of these networks, from circumstance to circumstance (what I call an “onto-cartography”). It is to map assemblages,

networks, or ecologies in the constitution of entities.¶ Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction .

It’s good at carrying out critiques that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic constructions of alternatives. This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks, assemblages, structures, or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable alternative. Here I’m reminded by the “underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park:¶ The underpants gnomes have a plan for achieving profit that goes like this:¶ Phase 1: Collect Underpants¶ Phase 2: ?¶ Phase 3: Profit!¶ They

even have a catchy song to go with their work:¶ Well this is sadly how it often is with the academic left. Our plan seems to be as follows:¶ Phase 1: Ultra- Radical Critique¶ Phase 2: ? ¶ Phase 3: Revolution and complete social transformation! ¶ Our problem is that

we seem perpetually stuck at phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques articulated at phase 1 are right, but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3, we have to produce

new collectives. In order for new collectives to be produced, people need to be able to hear and understand the critiques

developed at phase 1. Yet this is where everything begins to fall apart. Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only an academic with a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to produce an effect in the world if only PhD’s in the humanities can

understand him? Who are these things for? We seem to always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at the Naomi Kleins and

David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive academic journals that only universities can afford, with presses that don’t

have a wide distribution, and give our talks at expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics. Again, who are these things for? Is it an accident that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking their more about an academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are you doing?¶ But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We denounce others, we condemn them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions

we want to engage with, and we vilify them when they don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-putting and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the French communist party system and the Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of

parties and identifications in general?). This type of “ revolutionary ” is the greatest friend of the reactionary and capitalist because they do more to drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology than to undermine reigning ideology. These are the people that keep Rush Limbaugh in business. Well done!¶ But

this isn’t where our most serious shortcomings lie. Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We almost

never make concrete proposals for how things ought to be restructured, for what new material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced, and when we do, our critique-intoxicated cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the ways in which these things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives , and are doomed to fail. How , I wonder, are we to do anything at all when we have no concrete proposals? We live on a planet of 6 billion people. These 6 billion people are dependent on a certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their consumption. That network of production and distribution does

involve the extraction of resources, the production of food, the maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the building of shelters, the

distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc.¶ What are your proposals? How will you meet these problems? How will you navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure? Marx and Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today we are so intellectually bankrupt on these points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and talking about a return to the old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures, and not even proposing ways of avoiding the repetition of these horrors in a new system of

organization. Who among our critical theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production system that is responsive to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the problems of planned economy, ie., who is doing this in a way that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of micro-fascism that arise with party systems (there’s a reason that it was the Negri & Hardt contingent, not the Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At least the ecologists are thinking about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more, a melding of the ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. We’re not getting it yet though, as far as I can tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle.¶ I would love, just for a moment, to hear a radical environmentalist talk about his ideal high school that would be academically sound. How would he provide for the energy needs of that school? How would he meet building codes in an environmentally sound way? How would she provide food for the students? What would be her plan for waste disposal? And most importantly, how would she navigate the school

board, the state legislature, the federal government, and all the families of these students? What is your plan? What is your alternative? I think

there are alternatives. I saw one that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If you want to make a truly revolutionary contribution, this is where you should start. Why should anyone even bother listening to you if you aren’t proposing real plans? But we

haven’t even gotten to that point. Instead we’re like underpants gnomes, saying “revolution is the answer!” without addressing any of the infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we would concretely go about building those alternatives. Masturbation.¶ “Underpants gnome” deserves to be a category in critical theory; a sort of synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We need less critique not because critique isn’t important

or necessary– it is –but because we know the critiques, we know the problems. We’re intoxicated with critique because it’s easy and safe. We best every opponent with critique. We occupy a position of moral superiority with critique. But do we really do anything with critique? What we need today, more than ever, is composition or carpentry. Everyone knows something is wrong. Everyone knows this system is destructive and stacked against them. Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic system, despite

having the wrong economic theory. None of us, however, are proposing alternatives. Instead we prefer to shout and denounce. Good luck with that.

A2 baudrillardBaudrillard is wrong – We’re aware of differences between real life and media images. Just imagine how horrified you would be if you were watching a horror movie and found out that the actors were really being killed.Zizek 2000 (University of Ljubljana), 2000 (Slavoj, March/April “The Cyberspace Real,” http://www.egs.edu/faculty/Žižek/Žižek-the-cyberspace-real.html).

Are the pessimistic cultural criticists (from Jean Baudrillard to Paul Virilio) justified in their claim that cyberspace ultimately generates a kind of proto-psychotic immersion into an imaginary universe of hallucinations , unconstrained by any symbolic Law or by any impossibility of some Real ? If not, how are we to detect in cyberspace the contours of the other two dimensions of the Lacanian triad ISR, the Symbolic and the Real? As to the symbolic dimension, the solution seems easy — it suffices to focus on the notion of authorship that fits the emerging domain of cyberspace narratives, that of the "procedural authorship": the author (say, of the interactive immersive environment in which we actively participate by role-playing) no longer writes detailed story-line, s/he merely provides the basic set of rules (the coordinates of the fictional universe in which we immerse ourselves, the limited set of actions we are allowed to accomplish within this virtual space, etc.), which serves as the basis for the interactor's active engagement (intervention, improvisation). This notion of "procedural authorship" demonstrates the need for a kind of equivalent to the Lacanian "big Other": in order for the interactor to become engaged in cyberspace, s/he has to operate within a minimal set of externally imposed accepted symbolic rules/coordinates. Without these rules, the subject/interactor would effectively become immersed in a psychotic experience of an universe in which "we do whatever we want" and are, paradoxically, for that very reason deprived of our freedom, caught in a demoniac compulsion. It is thus crucial to establish the rules that engage us, that led us in our immersion into the cyberspace, while allowing us to maintain the distance towards the enacted universe. The point is not simply to maintain "the right measure" between the two extremes (total psychotic immersion versus non-engaged external distance towards the artificial universe of the cyber-fiction): distance is rather a positive condition of immersion. If we are to surrender to the enticements of the virtual environment, we have to "mark the border," to rely on a set of marks which clearly designate that we are dealing with a fiction, in the same way in which, in order to let ourselves go and enjoy a violent war movie , we somehow have to know that what we are seeing is a staged fiction, not real-life killing (imagine our horrible surprise if, while watching a war scene, we would suddenly see that we are watching a snuff, that the actor engaged in face-to-face combat is effectively cutting the throat of his "enemy"…). Against the theorists who fear that cyberspace involves the regression to a kind of psychotic incestuous immersion, one should thus discern in today's often clumsy and ambiguous improvisations about "cyberspace rules" precisely the effort to establish clearly the contours of a new space of symbolic fictions in which we fully participate in the mode disavowal, i.e. being aware that "this is not real life."

Baudrillard’s critique is non-falsifiable Marsh 95 – Philosophy Professor, Fordham (James, Critique, Action, and Liberation, p 292-3)

In such a postmodernist account is a reduction of everything to image or symbol that misses the relationship of these to realities such as corporations seeking profit , impoverished workers in these corporations, or peasants in Third-World countries trying to conduct elections. Postmodernism does not adequately distinguish here between a reduction of reality to image and a mediation of reality by image. A media idealism exists rooted in the influence of structuralism and poststructuralism and doing

insufficient justice to concrete human experience , judgment, and free interaction in the world.4 It is also paradoxical or contradictory to say it really is true that nothing is really true,’ that everything is illusory or imaginary . Postmodemism makes judgments that implicitly deny the reduction of reality to image. For example, Poster and Baudrillard do want to say that we really are in a new age that is informational and postindustrial. Again, to say that everything is imploded into media images is akin logically to the Cartesian claim that everything is or might be a dream. What happens is that dream or image is absolutized or generalized to the point that its original meaning lying in its contrast to natural, human, and social reality is lost. We can discuss Disneyland as reprehensible because we know the difference between Disneyland and the larger, enveloping reality of Southern California and the United States.5

Cap goodThe world is the best it’s ever been; markets are the reasonYevgeniy Feyman 14, Manhattan Institute Fellow, "The Golden Age Is Now", May 23, www.city-journal.org/2014/bc0523yf.html

In How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?, Lomborg and a group of economists conclude that ,

with a few exceptions, the world is richer, freer, healthier, and smarter than it’s ever been . These gains have coincided with the near-universal rejection of statism and the flourishing of capitalist principles . At a time when political figures such as New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and religious leaders such as Pope Francis frequently remind us about the evils of unfettered capitalism,

this is a worthwhile message. The doubling of human life expectancy is one of the most remarkable achievement s of the past century. Consider, Lomborg writes, that “the twentieth century saw life expectancy rise by about 3 months for every calendar year.” The average child in 1900 could expect to live to just 32 years old; now that same child should make it to 70. This increase came during a century when worldwide economic output, driven by the spread of capitalism and freedom, grew by more than 4,000 percent. These gains occurred in

developed and developing countries alike; among men and women; and even in a sense among children, as child mortality plummeted. Why are we living so much longer? Massive improvements in public health certainly played an important role. The World Health Organization’s global vaccination efforts essentially eradicated smallpox. But this would have been impossible without the innovative methods of vaccine preservation developed in the private sector by British scientist Leslie Collier. Oral rehydration therapies and antibiotics have also been instrumental in reducing child

mortality. Simply put, technological progress is the key to these gains— and market economies have liberated, and rewarded , technological innovation . People are not just living longer, but better —sometimes with government’s help, and

sometimes despite it. Even people in the developing countries of Africa and Latin America are better educated and better fed than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of children who would have died during previous eras due to malnutrition are alive today. Here, we can thank massive advancements in ag ricultural

production unleashed by the free market . In the 1960s, privately funded agricultural researchers bred new, high-yield strains of corn, wheat, and various other crops thanks to advances in molecular genetics. Globalization helped spread these technologies to developing countries, which used them not only to feed their people, but also to become export powerhouses. This so-called “green revolution” reinforced both the educational progress (properly nourished children tend to learn more) and the life-expectancy gains (better nutrition leads to better health) of the twentieth century. These children live in a

world with fewer armed conflicts, netting what the authors call a “peace dividend.” Globalization and trade liberalization have surely contributed to this more peaceful world (on aggregate). An interdependent global economy makes war costly. Of course, problems remain. As Lomborg points out, most foreign aid likely does little to boost economic welfare, yet hundreds of billions of dollars in “development assistance” continue to flow every year from developed countries to the developing world. Moreover, climate change is widely projected to

intensify in the second half of the twenty-first century, and will carry with it a significant economic cost. But those familiar with the prior work of the “skeptical environmentalist” understand that ameliorating these effects over time could prove wasteful. Lomborg notes that the latest research on climate change estimates a net cost of 0.2 to 2 percent of GDP from 2055 to 2080. The same report points out that in 2030, mitigation costs may be as high as 4 percent of GDP. Perhaps directing

mitigation funding to other priorities—curing AIDS for instance—would be a better use of the resources. Lomborg’s main message? Ignore those pining for the “good old days.” Thanks to the immense gains of the past century, there has never been a better

time to be alive .

Empirics outweigh everything – they take into account every factor, which predictive evidence can’t. Also post-dates their impact evidence and proves the trend is reversing

Cap solves war, and creates the least poverty; material resources before anything else Gregory 11 [Anthony Gregory. “Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending.” MISES DAILY (Austrian Economics Newspaper). August 2, 2011] AJ

It is simply a fact that capitalism , even hampered by the state, has dragged most of the world out of the pitiful poverty that characterized all of human existence for millennia. It was industrialization that saved the common worker from the constant tedium of primitive agriculture. It was the commodification of labor that doomed slavery, serfdom, and feudalism. C apitalism is the liberator of women and the benefactor of all children who enjoy time for study and play rather than endure uninterrupted toil on the farm. Capitalism is the great mediator between tribes and nations, which first put aside their weapons and hatreds in the prospect of benefiting from mutual exchange . "We stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: capitalism." A century ago, the Marxists acknowledged the productivity of capitalism and its preference to the feudalism it replaced, but predicted that the market would impoverish workers and lead to greater material scarcity. The opposite has happened and now the leftists attack capitalism mostly for other reasons: it produces too much and is wasteful, hurts the environment, exacerbates social divisions, isolates people from a spiritual awareness of their community, nation, or planet, and so on. But all the higher , more noble, less materialistic aspirations of humankind rest on material security. Even those who hate the market, whether they work in it or not, thrive on the wealth it generates. If Marx's buddy Engels hadn't been a factory manager, he would have lacked the leisure time needed to help concoct their destructive philosophy. Every social-science grad student; every Hollywood limousine liberal; every Christian Left do-gooder; everyone for whom socialism itself is the one religion; and every antimarket artist, scholar, philosopher, teacher, and theologian screams atop a soapbox produced by the very capitalist system he disparages. Everything we do in our lives — whether materialistic or of a nobler nature — we do in the comfort provided by the market. Meanwhile, the very poorest in a modern capitalist system, even one as corrupted by statism as the United States, have it much better than all but the wealthiest people a century ago . These blessings are owed to capitalism, and unleashing it further would finally erase poverty as we know it.

2NR

TThe counter interpretation is non-unique—there’s no reason why the ballot is key or why your critique must be a voting issue. Conceding the round solves your offense.McGinnis 14 Dave McGinnis (debate coach for WDM Valley) “In Defense of Topical Switch-Side Debate” NSD Update October 31st 2014 http://nsdupdate.com/2014/10/31/in-defense-of-topical-switch-side-debate/ JW 2/24/15

Note that this does not mean that these behaviors should be per se excluded from debate, any more than they are absolutely excluded from other activities. If a football team decided collectively that a political statement were more important than a game of football, I can imagine a world where they might take the field and initiate a performance protesting some injustice. Or a world where they boycott a game because of some unfairness. I cannot, however, imagine a world where the football team would insist that their protest constituted “football” and that, because their opponent did not protest as well as they did, that they should be awarded a victory . Thus, a “traditional” view of debate doesn’t exclude the performance of non-topical critical advocacies; it simply recognizes that they are not “debate” if they do not defend the truth or falsity of the resolution, and thus cannot result in a win. Debaters are still

free to present non-topical critiques whenever they choose . However, like the football player, they should not reasonably expect to win. I am amazed by the tenacity with which proponents of nontopical critical advocacy cling to the notion that they have to be able to “win” in order for their critical project to gain wider acceptance. On the one hand, this seems like obvious misdirection. It is not realistically the case that the presence of a particular kind of debate advocacy in elimination rounds of some tournament is going to increase the probability of “real world change.”